[German]Microsoft has ended support for Windows Vista back in April 2017. But there is a way, to support Windows Vista with security updates till January 2020. Here are the details.
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Windows Vista reached End of Life
Extended
Support for Windows Vista has ended in April 2017 – see my blog post Windows Vista reached End of Live (April 11, 2017). This means, Microsoft won't ship security updates via Windows Update anymore.
But in rare cases, Microsoft provides some security updates for Windows Vista. One exception was in June 2017 at Microsoft patchday, where Microsoft has released patches for Windows XP and Windows Vista (see my blog post Microsoft June 13, 2017 Patchday – further updates).
But wait, there is more
Windows Vista and Server 2008 are using the same code base. A German blog reader remembered me about that fact and pointed out, that security updates for Windows Server 2008 are installable under Windows Vista. So it's possible to download updates for Windows Server 2008 from Microsoft Update Catalog and install the packages manually. It's only mandatory to take care about the 32 or 64 bit updates. The German blog reader wrote:
… the updates for Server 2008 are also valid for Vista. Just download it and install it manually. Special updates for Windows Server 2008 features (like Hyper-V) aren't supported in Vista.
Examples of such special updates are the April 2017 Server 2008 updates for Hyper V: KB3211308 and KB3217841. Both updates are not offered on a Windows Server 2008 without Hyper V installed, and won't be installable in Windows Vista. In case you try to install such an update, Windows refuse that with a message, that the update isn't supported on this platform.
Windows Server 2008 Support till 2020
The beef for users of Windows Vista is: Microsoft has extended support for Windows (Storage) Server 2008 Standard until January 14, 2020, as you could read at this site. So in brief: Windows Vista can be patched until that date. Here are updates provides for May and June 2017:
Updates May 2017
KB4018271
KB4019115
KB4018466
KB4018556
KB4018821
KB4018885
KB4018927
KB4019149
KB4019204
KB4019206
KB4015193
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Updates June 2017
KB4021558
KB4018106
KB4021903
KB4021923
KB4022008
KB4022010
KB4022013
KB4022883
KB4022884
KB4022887
KB4024402
KB890830
Only Microsoft's Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (KB890830) can't be installed in Windows Vista anymore. But most Vista users are running an up to date antivirus tool, I suppose. Martin Brinkmann from ghacks.net has also published an article based on my German blog post. Also this thread at Bleeping Computer contains some information about Windows Server 2008 security fixes available also for Vista.
